Rest assured, there are powerful interests that will not put up with an Obama presidency if it’s about even half the changes it threatens — I mean, promises — to make.

Watch them circle, yipping at his integrity. “Obama’s moralizing tone may not wear well,” a Wall Street Journal headline archly surmised a few days ago. “How often do Americans want to hear how misguided they were before his arrival?”

Huh? The new president didn’t simply, inscrutably “arrive” at the White House, as though appointed by, oh, Rod Blagojevich. He was elected by a serious, screaming-for-change majority of Americans to do precisely what he is doing, and so much more — that is to say, to upset to the point of apoplexy the status quo of war and greed as represented so faithfully by, among many other media hypocrites, the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

One of the remaining Bush appointees in the Obama administration is the U.S. representative to the International Whaling Commission (IWC). And like the man who appointed him, William Hogarth is wreaking destruction on our planet and its inhabitants.

On February 2, Hogarth submitted a proposal that would lift the international moratorium on whale hunting. Tell President Obama you don't support U.S.-sanctioned killing of wales! >>

Hogarth brokered a proposed deal that would allow Japan to do new "coastal whaling" in exchange for ramping down so-called "scientific" whaling over the next five years.

But a slow decline in one type of whales being killed in exchange for opening a new group for slaughter is not a compromise that's acceptable! Hogarth's proposal puts the threatened coastal Japanese whales at even greater risk. The IWC needs to instead focus its attention on stopping whaling altogether.

AMY GOODMAN: A coalition of environmental groups are calling on senators to remove a controversial provision from the $900 billion stimulus bill that could lead to the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants. We host a debate between independent journalist and longtime anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman and Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace co-founder and member of the pro-nuclear Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

Guests:

Harvey Wasserman, Independent journalist and longtime anti-nuclear activist. In the early 1970s he helped found the grassroots movement against nuclear power in the United States.

Patrick Moore, co-chair of the pro-nuclear Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. He is founder of the organization Green Spirit. In the 1970s he was one of the founding members of Greenpeace.

Rush Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: As the Senate continues debate on President Obama’s $900 billion economic stimulus plan, a coalition of environmental groups are calling on senators to remove a controversial provision that could lead to the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants.

I want to thank each and everyone of you for your efforts in my urgent time of need, you cannot imagine how much my spirit has been lifted from the cards and letters, the phone calls and how everyone kept up the pressure. My gratitude is really more than I can express.

My return to Lewisburg was met like a hero’s welcome, and many people came to assure me of my safety there. It is so ironic that the prisoners in a federal maximum-security prison can guarantee my safety, but the Bureau of Prisons will not. I did not say, “cannot”, but “will not” do so. You have to remember the BOP is a little brother to the FBI and they came from an illegitimate mother called the JUST-US (Justice) Department.

It’s the 90th anniversary this month of the general strike that brought the city of Seattle to a virtual standstill -- one of the very few general strikes in U.S.history and certainly one of the most dramatic and disruptive.

Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson described it this way: “Street car gongs ceased their clamor. Newsboys cast their unsold papers into the streets. From the doors of mill and factory, store and workshop, streamed 65,000 working men. School children with fear in their hearts hurried homeward. The lifestream of a great city stopped.”

It was one of no less than 3,600 strikes that broke out nationwide in that post- World War I year of 1919. Steelworkers, coal miners, workers of all kinds – even policemen -- walked off the job.

They acted in response to drastic reductions in the wages that the heavy demand for labor during the war had brought them, the onerous working conditions that were now imposed on them and the widespread attempts by government and employers to destroy their unions.

The American Federation of Labor’s local council called the Seattle general
The desperate, dangerous nuclear power industry has dropped a $50 billion stealth bomb meant to irradiate the Obama Stimulus Package.

It comes in the form of a mega-loan guarantee package that would build new reactors Wall Street wouldn’t finance even when it had cash. It will take a healthy dose of citizen action to stop it, so start calling your Senators now.

The vaguely worded bailout-in-advance provision was snuck through the Senate Appropriations Committee in the deep night of January 27. It would provide $50 billion in loan guarantees for “eligible technologies” that would technically include renewable sources and electric transmission. But the handout is clearly directed at nukes and “clean coal.”

The Stimulus Package is explicitly meant to create jobs within the next two years. But according to sources at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, no new reactors could be licensed for construction within that time. Nor could any new coal plants. And thus the funds in this rider are to "remain available until committed." That means their "stimulus" might not go into effect for many years.

Celebrating the fact that J. Kenneth Blackwell was defeated in his recent bid for the leadership of the Republican National Committee! Actually, he did about as poorly as a guy could do. Of course though, the Dispatch left a few things out and well, Bob Fitrakis points out a few of them here. Enjoy!



George Washington raised large quantities of hemp. So did Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and virtually every other 1700s American farmer.

It is also highly likely at least some of them smoked its potent sibling, now known as marijuana.

Perhaps we should commemorate the upcoming President’s Day by honoring George Washington with a National Celebration to Re-Legalize Hemp and Marijuana.

Indeed, in the Age of Obama, this old news has a new meaning. It is time to end Hemp/Marijuana Prohibition. With Bush gone and a new generation taking charge, we may finally have a chance to do it. Our nation’s famous Founders are our key allies.

Since 1937 the US has suffered through a period of hemp persecution that all the Founders---from Washington to Franklin, from Adams to Madison---would have deemed absolutely insane.

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